Pictures of Some Happy Creatures

Minnesota,

The state of Minnesota.  Highway twelve to Minneapolis.

You start out in South Dakota, driving past the dug-up earth and plains where prairie dogs are poisoned, the lake where fish and birds are tortured for sport, and the signs that say, "Animal Rights Groups Aren't Taxed -- Let's Tax 'Em!"  and "Fishing, Hunting, Trapping: Diamonds in Our Economy".  You feel like stopping and saying to the first Dakotan within earshot, "'Diamonds' is right, King Leopold!"  But you know it wouldn't register.  He probably has never heard of King Leopold.

Cross the state line now, and it gets worse.  Turkey farms abound along the way, huge long barns where animals are trapped.  Not even barns -- this would somehow dignify the situation -- tin sheds where animals are confined pressed against one another, but knowing no love, knowing no sun, no fresh air, dying in squalor, not allowed to live as a turkey as we are allowed to live as human beings.  Houses where people live, and you think, How can they sleep at night knowing what they've done, what they've allowed.  Life seems much more meaningless.

One small town gives way to another, all the same, each with a convenience store, bar, and a church, and you wonder how convenience can even be made a priority in such a world as this, factory farm after factory farm on the highway, and a convenience store in town.  Bars where small-town folk pretend to enjoy themselves, seem to socialize, if socializing means predicting.  Predicting is important in small-town Minnesota, for if you say something unexpected or act in a new way...  Keeping your wallet in your front pocket, for example, or wearing a hoodie underneath a blazer could cause someone to question the way things are, and things can't stand up to questioning in rural Minnesota, things have to be the same.  You stand here, but not here!  These are the orders, and they have to be obeyed.  Churches preach the same bland sermon every Sunday, and humans live the same bland lives in rural Minnesota.

You stop for gas in Willmar, and use the restroom with a sign on the door that says, "For paying customers ONLY!"  Someone has painted it pink and left a can of cinnamon scented air freshener on top of the toilet tank.  Unsmiling, the cashier takes your card for the gas and a bottle of juice, and you leave, vowing never to stop here again.  But, you realize, you have to stop somewhere in rural Minnesota, and every place is the same.

Hours after gray clouds, more turkey farms, more inhospitable stops along the way, you eventually end up on the 394, and you drive like a bird freed from its cage, downtown Minneapolis looming hopefully ahead.  You exit, drive to Nicollet, where you park your car and walk to Orchestra Hall, where you order a Bombay Sapphire and tonic before the show begins.

We begin with Bernstein's Overture to Candide, a lively, energetic performance that drives the fatigue right out of you, stretches and exhilarates a mind weary from the hell it has seen along the way.  We move next into Haydn, the fourth movement of the Clock symphony, which rebuilds and revitalizes, sets your mind back into rhythm once again.  Dukas's The Sorceror's Apprentice, a flawless performance of a complex piece that somehow brings freshness and freedom to your mind, almost moving you to tears, perhaps recalling a more simple childhood when the world wasn't such a bad place, when things made sense.  We close with Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, the fourth movement, and leave you with a lasting and hopeful impression that beauty can be found in all of this.

That night, you lie awake in the Motel 6, wondering how Minnesota can have Minneapolis, with its vegetarian restaurants, and Guthrie Theater, and world-class orchestra, and Nicollet Mall, while the rest of the state lives in a mental and spiritual squalor, a stagnation of perverse values, the stink from the factory farms reflecting the stench of the hearts and minds of those who call themselves farmers, but are not farmers.  You start to consider some of the most difficult philosophical questions: What do we live for?  Why do we exist?  Were we brought here by intelligent design, or just chance?  In Orchestra Hall, one believes once again in intelligent design, that we exist to bring beauty and meaning to the world, that we live for the pursuit of each day becoming something better than we were the day before.  It all makes sense.

But, next day, back on the road, you find it hard once again to believe this.  Everything seems to argue for the contrary.  Everything seems random and amoral, and you have other thoughts now.  You believe humanity to be a horrible accident, as this seems to be the only thing that can explain the things you see.  For all their rules and norms, you see these people are shallow and evil.  Can evil exist without a god, you wonder.

But as you drive down highway twelve through Minnesota you see that, in fact, it does.

The Trip, part one

Twenty, twenty, twenty-four hours to go

I wanna be sedated.

-The Ramones

10:00PM and still on the road, having made the mistake of driving through the Black Hills the day  after the Sturgis motorcycle rally; having experienced vapor lock in Bell Fourche.  Driving across South Dakota had been like driving over the landscape of my past, beautiful and lonely, stopping to fill gas in Dupree, where I once lived, buying a bunch of bananas at the Lakota Thrifty Mart in Eagle Butte, seeing it all one last time for who knew how long.

Still, when I had crossed over the border to Wyoming, I had immediately felt free, so free in fact that as soon as I reached Newcastle, I stopped for a pack of cigarettes, a habit I had given up several years ago.  Slowly dragging on a Camel cigarette while driving on the stretch of road between Newcastle and Lusk with the radio off as the sun slipped like liquid behind the Wyoming landscape, my dog curled up on the passenger seat, felt like the first time I had relaxed all day.  After the heat of the August day, the night air coming in through the window I had open a crack felt exhilarating even though I was still only wearing a black t-shirt with the sleeves cut off, corduroy shorts, and two-dollar flip-flops from Walmart.

Now I was at another filling station in Lusk, not to refuel, but to feel my dog.  It was, in fact, about five hours past her usual feeding time, but I had not yet found a convenient place to feed her, a nice park to stop and run her a bit.  I was not yet accustomed to life on the road, the rhythm of sneaking into corners unnoticed to complete usually personal tasks like eating and feeding my dog.  In fact, people were walking past me as I was trying to hold my dog's leash in one hand and a flimsy margarine tubful of dog food steady in the other so that she could eat.

Then came the task of walking my dog in yet another strange area, patiently waiting as she scoped out the territory, lost in each new scent as I puffed a cigarette and glanced anxiously at my watch while muttering impatient words of encouragement -- "Good girl, Sandy!  Go potty!" -- after which, I had to once again load her into my Blazer while I went inside to buy a calling card and some snacks.

Outside again, I stood at the pay phone, surrounded by bikers in leather who had come from Sturgis, and I wondered how long I would see them on the way to Arizona, where I would be teaching eighth-grade English less than a week from now.  I had, in fact, only heard of the place I would be teaching since the Friday before, and here I was already in Lusk, Wyoming, not yet out of familiar territory, but urged out of a comfortable state of mind by the changes that this trip implied.

I picked up the receiver and punched in the number on the card, but because of the noise made by the bikes in the parking lot, I was unable to hear the instructions from the automated menu; so I gave up, hung up, got back into my Blazer, and drove off.

Eleven o'clock.  Midnight.  One o'clock.  Two.

Cheyenne.  Denver.  Colorado Springs.

Harleys all the way, and all the motels were booked up, some advertising "no vacancy", others requiring the patron to inquire at the front desk.

No motels until Pueblo, and by the time I got checked in, walked my dog, and dragged my luggage into the room, it was nearly four in the morning.  As I lay down, I felt that the sun must be almost ready to peek out of the East.

My dog was already curled up on the bed when I lay down, head throbbing from the drive.  The room smelled of bleach and stale cigarette smoke.  My face felt coated with the stress of endless driving, the glare of headlights in my eyes, motorcycles weaving in and out of traffic.  Tired as I was, I wouldn't be able to sleep until I had at least rinsed off in the shower.

In front of the mirror, my eyes were bloodshot.  My hair was wind-whipped and thinning.  Was I a thirty-year-old man with a teaching degree, or was I a twenty-five-year-old recovering meth addict.  God, the years really showed.  Was this the culmination of years of disappointment?  Was this the result of smoking cigarettes?  Or drinking all that alcohol in college?  Who knew?

I stood in the shower with my flip-flops on, a precaution I had observed ever since I got plantar warts from the cheap motel shower in Ash Fork ten years ago.  People would pass some disgusting shit onto you if you weren't careful.

After about ten minutes, I turned the water off, and went to bed, still half wet from the shower.  Just before I turned out the light, I checked my watch one last time.  4:30.